Joe Torre

When one does poorly, there is a certain demeaner that they should take - want to do better and not screw up so badly the next time. However, Manny Ramirez's remark that "he likes it" begs to differ with the philosophy, and all things considered, it is "Manny being Manny" - i.e. a complete idiot who needs his unconditional release for the purpose of waivers / psychiatric counseling. To be honest, he can live off his last couple contracts for a while. And since Bleacher Report is offering a list of the top 50 most over-rated people, what better way to start with than a guy who doesn't deserve a 5th chance (AT LEAST 2 from Boston, 1 from LA, 1 from Chicago, and now 1 from Tampa Bay), and to think that he does is saying A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT MORE ABOUT 1995 TO 2004 THAN THE REST OF HIS CAREER THAT ISN'T THE LAST 187 AT BATS OF 2008. Most of the list should be called 3 things - Yankees, Red Sox, and steroids users - oh my! On the list is some pretty standard fare on the bigger contract and "value" to the team than actual productivity: Hideo Nomo, Alfonso Soriano, Vernon Wells, and Barry Zito (minus his teddie bear). But there are some pretty confusing choices, too: Cliff Lee, Brooks Robinson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, and Pete Rose, a man who played the game to win obsessively, but who is slighted for being ONLY a hitter in the same way that they call Nolan Ryan only a strikeout pitcher who threw a lot of walks. In this, we can only say one thing - "If Rose's stubborness to never give up and keep playing until he ran out of gas completely is wrong, then I don't want to be right. Didn't Cal Ripken never give up his streak until it was incredibly late in his career? The Orioles had been in the toilet and have been since he refused to make room for a new guy - because Baltimore loved him that much. But alas... the point of lists is to debate, so I debate with two of their choices. The first question would be how Roger Maris is considered over-rated for two good seasons despite the folks at Bleacher Report forgetting his 1960 MVP Award. Perhaps, from their narrow minded judgements of remembering what parts of baseball history that they choose to see, they should remember how the New York media did their damnedest to destroy the man who failed to live up to being Babe Ruth. Now, we are Maris apologists here - because we realize what he was to the game: a hard working player who didn't have time for the cliches and short talk. He may not have been as charismatic and lovable as Mickey Mantle, but he brought a tremendous upside - even if he never did hit .300. And for that, he was very good. He wasn't great. We don't claim he was. I can't do that revisionist history thing, but at the end of the day, his season in 1961 will stand as the only home run season to eclipse Ruth's - without aid of PEDs. And then, there is Joe Torre. Now, I'm a Yankee hater, but I do love the books Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty by Buster Olney and The Yankee Years by Tom Verducci. Both of them accurately depict an era of time that I came to loathe as I grinded my teeth to the thought of the Yankees winning again and again (I wasn't vested in 96, but the Padres, the Mets, and the Braves all had to have something to beat the Yankees... and when they didn't... thank God for 2001 and the DBacks, which led into the Angels, the Marlins, and that miracle Red Sox run in 04 before the collapse that led to teams like Detroit and Cleveland beating the Yankees. I used to hate Torre. I used to hate his look as he sat in the dugout waiting for something good to happen or to pull the hook on Chin Mein Wang, someone who is TRULY over-rated (but not on the list), but after I read that book, everything changed. There was something about the way that guys like Jeter and Mussina rallied the troops for the coach, a guy who wasn't even wanted in New York due to the fact that he couldn't get his other teams to gel. But that's leadership. Sometimes, being in the right place for the right people is all that matters. Call it a facet of Gladwell's book Outliers, but could anyone else have had the right training, the right manner, the right respect from his young troops that he built confidence in with any of the same talent that Torre used to get it done? Was he the best manager ever? Probably not, but then again, Larussa and Francona are far more over-rated than Torre and they're on teams that I like. In the end, he was run out of town by the extended Steinbrenner family, but for what he did for that time, we all hope that we can get the troops to come together and win 4 of 5 and almost 2 more. That's dominance beyond the players he did and didn't have (since really, only Jeter and Rivera are hall of famers on that team). If that makes the list of Yankees that I loathed for the better part of my adult life over-rated, so be it, but I have to believe that a leader brings the best out of his players, and for him to do that, and for me to spend my life hating the Yankees... I don't fear what isn't real.

Roger Maris

Waking up yesterday morning to a story in the New York Times about how the U.S. and Israel worked together to release a worm into the Iranian nuclear program so that it couldn't get up and running has me contemplating exactly what is the point of the media. On one hand, I have to ask myself if this is something above "no duh." I mean really. Why on Earth WOULD WE NOT try to take out a hostile country's nuclear program that could hurt us or our friends? On the other hand, I have to ask myself if this is about some kind of attack on the U.S. as a whole. I mean, if this is top secret, and we'll assume that it is, what business does this have playing out in the media?
But alas, this is a baseball site, not a political outlet, and I use media attacks to lead into Roger Maris and the transition from the media loving players to attacking them viciously. Sure, there was Ted Williams before him, but was there ever an attack as concentrated and individually damaging as that, which was perpetrated against Roger for being "boring" (at least compared to Babe Ruth) and unable to stomach stupid questions (considering many NASCAR guys give the same kind of F U response as Roger and Cee Lo Green) and just unwilling to provide a day in day out story while pursuing the home run record that he was deemed unworthy of.
Currently, I am reading Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero, and overall, it's pretty good. You can skip the first few chapters about how his grandparents moved to America from Europe and how his parents relationship started out in dysfunction (it ends in divorce - so it goes) and start about 30 pages into the book at chapter 4.
I've always been a Roger Maris fan since I first heard his story in 1998 as Mark McGwire pursued his record. It was sad to hear about the asterisk and the total devastation of what should have been a joyous race between Maris and Mantle (who had been hated in many circles for not being Joe DiMaggio - at least until Roger came along). Maybe the media made up for this with the race between McGwire and Sosa (and maybe the Curse of Not Being Babe Ruth made the media feel inclined to destroy them and everyone else who got close to Babe Ruth in a way that wasn't worthy - steroids be just a cover story).
But in the end, Roger took a pitch deep on the final day of the season and was branded forever with the asterisk that was there despite it's never been typed into the official record books and for 37 years he suffered in pain despite a momentary stay with the St. Louis Cardinals in 67 and 68. He then retired and died in 1985, a tragic end to a great human being. I wish I would have known his story sooner, but the fact that I do is a story I will continue to tell throughout the course of this blog.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Maris or baseball. I've been reading it nightly in sight of a teddy bear that belongs to my wife. More than anything else, that bear reminds me of her, and when I think about it and her, I think about how wonderful she is to me. For our wedding, she knew that gifts are given between husband and wife (I didn't, so if you're reading, take note), and she gave me the Roger Maris PSA8 rookie that I always joked she would buy me if she truly loved me. When I took it out of the box, I was shaking, and I had no idea what to say. I felt like such a fool for not knowing that I had to get her a gift as well (we ended up putting a lot of money towards the things that she wanted for our home that we bought a few months later). I ran all over Toledo looking for something worthy of her and feeling totally freaked out on the night before our wedding.
Even now, I don't know if I feel worthy of such a great gift. I'll occasionally open the locked box and pull Roger out of his protective cloth bag - not all the way mind you - and look on his visage and think of all that his family went through in 98, all that he went through from 1961 until he left baseball a completely broken man, and how his wife came through for him above and beyond the call of duty (something completely left out of Tom Clavin and Danny Peary's aforementioned book).
Maybe Roger was the best way to give me a physical gift that came through to me, but to be honest, nowhere am I happier in the gift I was given than the "I do." And perhaps that's hokey, but alas... it is what makes me happy in life.
And that thought and her presence is what keeps me from feeling the news of the world in a way that makes me sad as I wait for spring and new life and no more snow - just warmth and good times.